Interview With The Secret World’s Joel Bylos: Ask Your Questions

This weekend we’re pretty excited to be spending some time one-on-one with The Secret World‘s newly minted Game Director, Joel Bylos.

Aside from being a friendly guy, Joel is also an expat aussie, so we’re here to both give him some homegrown hospitality whilst grilling him on everything TSW.

It’ll be an interview for our Flash Point podcast, and so we’d love questions from the TSW community to pose to Joel alongside our own.

So – if you’ve got a question, post it in the comments below and we’ll ask as many as we can, with a full shout-out to each person on the podcast. Hard / critical questions are fine but please keep it civilised.

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I’ve noticed word of mouth about TSW is slowly spreading, but a lot of our friends had never heard of it. Have you considered further marketing, or are you counting on the fans to bring in their friends?

The Secret World delivers a solid story, but the largest complaint from the community is that there is a lack of scaling to prepare people as they move from zone to zone. I think the largest problem is that once they hit Blue Mountain the casual player finds that if they did not build their character correctly that they’re incapable of continuing on their own.

So my question is a little complicated, do you see any method by which you can either educate players that when they zone complete that they have some understanding of the goal they are working towards to allow them to say, “Wow I’m ready for the next zone.”

Failing that, do you see any chance of granting those confused players an opportunity to reset their skill points? (The largest problem seems to be players spending too many points in weapon skills as opposed to talismans. I.E. they have 5-6 weapons at rank 3 at the end of Savage Coast, but only major, minor and talismans at 1-2 ranks.

This is not limited to Blue Mountain by the way, the same is true of Egypt, City of the Sun God, and finally Transylvania. (Though I feel that in many cases Transylvania is easier then City of the Sun God.)

Joel, I’m a long time fan of the Secret World. I find however that many low level players do not understand the skill system. For example, they do not understand the importance of raising talisman levels to increase talisman ranks – this allows them to wear better gear, increases the amount of experienced gained from quest.

What ends up happening is they arrive to Blue Mountain with skill points in 5-6 weapons at rank 3 and talismans at only 1-2. So my question is do you see a good way to educate players better that they need to increase talisman levels and at the same time upon completion of a zone know that they’re ready to move on to the next area. Something built into the game which says, “You’re ready for the next challenge in Blue Mountain, Egypt, City of the Sun God, etc.”

Alternatively would you provide a system which lets you reset skill points for these people who miss manage their upgrades?

Joel, TSW had an incredibly dedicated (yet small) audience almost from the onset. Long, detailed ARGS catered to that audience, and yet it seems very little was done to advertise the game outside of this core group of people. Do you plan to help get the game more mainstream attention going forward? The game is awesome, and unique and needs to be played by more people.